China’s upstart planemaker hails ‘breakthrough’ in its plan to take on Boeing and Airbus

China’s first homegrown passenger jet is picking up steam as the planemaker Comac builds a foothold to compete with aviation’s big players.

The Comac C909 is designed for regional journeys, with a capacity between 78 and 90 seats.

That makes it smaller than any jet currently produced by Airbus or Boeing, instead likelier to compete with those built by the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.

It attracts less attention than the larger C919 — a similar model to the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 — but is still a key part of Comac’s ambitions.

As Saturday marked nine years since the C909’s maiden flight, China’s official state news agency Xinhua interviewed the jet’s chief designer, Chen Yong.

He called it “a pioneer in my country’s commercial aircraft field,” adding that it achieved “a breakthrough” by being China’s first commercial aircraft.

Tuesday then saw flag carrier Air China launch its first international service with the C909. A water-cannon salute greeted the plane as it landed in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar after a 90-minute journey from Hohhot, in China’s north.

“We look forward to it continuing to write the pride of domestic aircraft in the future,” the airline said in a post on Weibo.

That came after Lao Airlines, the flag carrier of Laos, leased two C909s from Comac and started operations in April, Xinhua reported. Later that month, Vietnam’s VietJet also leased two of the jets from Chengdu Airlines, launching daily flights between Ho Chi Minh City and the nearby Con Dao archipelago.

These are promising developments for the small jet, which Comac renamed from the ARJ21 last November, unifying its brand in a sign of growing ambitions.

However, only 166 such planes have been delivered, Chen said.

The plane also looks very similar to the McDonnell Douglas MD-80. One of Comac’s predecessor companies partnered with the American planemaker in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Comac has faced allegations of corporate espionage over the C919.

In 2022, a Chinese intelligence officer, Yanjun Xu, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a US jury found him guilty of trying to steal technology related to GE Aviation’s engines.

The aviation industry remains divided on Comac’s chances of competing with the likes of Boeing and Airbus.

“Comac is years away from being certified outside China … It’s going to be a very limited market for quite some time,” John Schmidt, Accenture’s aerospace and defense lead, told Business Insider in an interview at last month’s Paris Air Show.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said in February that the sector could go “from a duopoly to a potential triopoly.”

He added that Comac was more likely to succeed thanks to its “privileged access” to the Chinese market, which accounts for a fifth of global aircraft demand.

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